Published by Vintage / Jonathan Cape, 2011, 230 pages When she was 25, Jeanette Winterson wrote Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a fictionalized account of growing up as an adopted child in a Pentecostal community and coming out as a lesbian. This book, written when she was 50, tells the same story, but this …
Continue reading Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?: Jeanette Winterson
Published by William Collins, 2015, 304 pages This is an extraordinary story about a young North Korean woman who managed to get out of the country. Lee Hyeon-seo was born in Hyesan, a North Korean town near the Chinese border. Her father was in the military, and the family was comfortably off, partly because her …
Continue reading The Girl with Seven Names—Escape from North Korea: Lee Hyeon-seo (with David Jones)
Published by Bloomsbury, 2025, 273 pages “As I walk through each room, I immediately become immersed in reminiscences of my parents, my brothers, relatives, visitors and attendants, their lives and mine, their stories and the stories of those who lived here before us. Lives from the past can be invoked in each room and through …
Continue reading Telling Me My Stories—Fragments of a Himalayan Childhood: Kunzang Choden
Published by Liveright, 2018, 320 pages In this book, Seth Kugel takes us back to the thrill of discovery when we travel, which we seem to have lost in this time of information overload. Kugel retreats from our hurried, switched-on way of functioning, where we consult online resources for the perfect restaurant before we go …
Continue reading Rediscovering Travel—A Guide for the Globally Curious: Seth Kugel
Published by Bantam Press / Random House, 2005, 352 pages “We could bore ourselves to death, drink ourselves to death, or have a bit of an adventure.” A retired couple, Terry and Monica Darlington take their whippet, Jim, and their narrowboat, meant for canals, across the Channel into France. This is a travel book whose …
Continue reading Narrow Dog to Carcassonne: Terry Darlington
Written with Will MillardPublished by Witness Books, 2025, 312 pages “When I was young, if you had granted me one wish, I probably would have chosen to be invisible. If I was invisible, I rationalized, then I could get as close as possible to the earth’s most elusive creatures. Moreover, I could comfortably evade all …
Continue reading In the Hide—How the Natural World Saved My Life: Gordon Buchanan
Translated from Spanish by Maureen ShaughnessyPublished by Charco Press, 2024, 188 pages. Original version published in 2021. “So then, why did you come back every summer? Do you like to suffer? Why didn’t you just stay home? There, in Buenos Aires, dying of heat. Ah. No. That’s right—it’s because you couldn’t. You didn’t have anyone …
Continue reading Why Did You Come Back Every Summer: Belén López Peiró
Published by Catapult, 2020, 218 pages “We continue to slip in and out of society like ghosts in the night, connecting our hearts and minds with the land and the many tribal peoples who cross our paths every single day, carrying the heavy thread of the prayers of hundreds of individuals. We run through landscapes …
Continue reading Spirit Run—A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land: Noé Álvarez
Translated from Norwegian by Becky L. CrookPublished by Penguin, 2017, 144 pages. Original version published in 2016. “Whenever I am unable to walk, climb or sail away from the world, I have learned to shut it out.“Learning this took time. Only when I understood that I had a primal need for silence was I able …
Published by Allen Lane / Ferrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2020, 348 pages “This dishevelled mass of wood-chip brown regarded us warily with electric-yellow eyes. ... It was clearly an owl, but bigger than any I’d seen, about the size of an eagle but fluffier and more portly, with enormous ear tufts. Backlit by the hazy …
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